A poly Beauty and the Beast retelling? Colour me intrigued.

As I was reading this book, I couldn’t help but feel a little sceptical at what romance book needs 4 400-page books to tell the complete story and, if I am being honest, I am still not completely convinced that this isn’t a story that couldn’t be told is a much more succinct way. I am hopeful that further books will be more focused on the fantasy side of the plot after resolving the romance of the story. I am not sure how I would have done it differently but I think part of my frustration with this book is that the blurb tells you that Rosalina is the mate of all 4 of the fae princes which takes some of the mystery way and it kinda feels like you are waiting for the moment when the characters realise it too in this book. And, spoiler alert, they never really get there. Well, that’s not factually true, Keldarion and Rosalina do have a moment right at the end but he can’t admit it otherwise he will lose her. That was really my biggest frustration with this book because it felt as though we were being denied something and I hated it.

I think my overall feeling with this book was that it was fine but definitely not great. I was a bit thrown by the fact that Rosalina’s world was pretty much contemporary US so we would get occasional pop cultural references. As I write this, I realise that Rosalina exists in a world where she would be very familiar with the story of Beauty and the Beast but doesn’t recognise that she has essentially been transported into that story? Sure 🙃 I don’t think the contemporary elements were overall too jarring but it wasn’t what I had initially expected for this book. 

Some of the queer elements didn’t sit right with me. The first sex scene we got was between Farron and Dayton and it was framed in a really weird way because we saw it through Rosalina’s eyes and it was written as though it served only as titillation for her. There is already a conversation around the way that MM is used in that way by women so to have this scene framed this way was jarring to say the least. There was also, and this could be me connecting the wrong dots, a point where Farron was described as “indecisive” and that seemed to be in relation to his sexuality and that was why he was cursed - ew.

I think there are a lot of ways that this world still needs to be expanded upon and there are a lot of questions remaining unanswered but I did feel a little underwhelmed at best from this book. I also kinda got the ick at something which is just a theory but I hope isn’t true (that Caspian is Rosalina’s brother) so we will see how that plays out…

For all of its flaws, this book was very readable, I just hate that it is dragging the story out so much.